Beyond the Guidelines: Assessing Meta’s Political Ad Moderation in the EU

This study examines Meta’s enforcement of its political advertising policies across 16 European Union countries. Leveraging a comprehensive dataset provided by Meta under the European Digital Services Act, encompassing all ads targeting EU countries, our analysis exposes shortcomings in Meta’s ad moderation. In particular, over 60% of the ads moderated as political by Meta do not fall under Meta’s guidelines. Also, we estimate that only 7.7% of undeclared political ads, i.e., political ads that are not declared as such by advertisers, undergo moderation by Meta. These results highlight substantial deficiencies in Meta’s regulation of political advertisements, underscoring the need for enhanced measures to safeguard democratic discourse.